Wednesday, September 3, 2014

A new paper by SPPI and climate scientist Dr. John McLean:Excerpts:This new review is unlike the previous analysis because it focuses not only on a statistical analysis but also various review comments, many of which were simply noticed in passing....Together these suggest that the review was less thorough than IPCC's bland presentation of the numbers might suggest.Reviewers’ comments varied from editorial issues (e.g. spelling errors) to protestations about omissions, flawed assumptions and exaggerations in the draft document.In particular, doubts about the credibility of the output of climate models were dismissed, this despite the draft report pointing out that models failed to predict the actual (or very near) absence of warming from 1998 onwards. Two individual reviewers argued that IPCC statements of likelihood on two different issues should be modified, one from “very likely” to “likely”, the other vice versa and both were successful in having the text modified.Several review comments from governments displayed ignorance, with some even claiming that warming was continuing, which contradicted the easily accessed HadCRUT temperature data that the IPCC uses. One government comment raised the hackneyed and irrelevant issue that the last decade was the warmest on record, and another made reference to “Mother Earth”. With few exceptions government policies are closely linked to IPCC claims so it was surprising to find several governments complaining about the difficulty of understanding the Summary for Policymakers.